" 'AF of L - she's a no good,' said the guv who belonged to the CIO.
" 'Whatsa mat AF of L?' says the other one.
" 'Ah-h-h - AF of L you gotta too many ums.'
" 'Whaddya mean - too many ums?' says the AF of L guy.
" 'AF of L you gotta the maximum, you gotta the minimum, you gotta the optimum, you gotta the ulti-matum. That's a too many ums. CIO we only gotta one urn . . . fuck 'um.' "
The radio news continued: "Naples: Sixth Fleet announced today that one of its fighter planes disappeared last night on a flight over the eastern Mediterranean. A large-scale search operation is in progress today."
"That's the first plane they've lost in some time," observed Scuttlebutt.
"We'll be in that area tomorrow," said Fatso. "So all you guys keep your eyes open for flyers paddling around in rubber boats."
That evening the boys were sitting around on the well deck under the stars listening to Fatso and Scuttlebutt swap yarns about how they had won the war.
"I was on the Bonne Homme Richard," said Scuttlebutt. "She was a hell of a fine ship. Had the best flight-deck crew of anybody in the Third Fleet. One day we took a kamikaze on the flight deck. He hit just forward of the elevator and started a hell of a fire among the planes they were loading for the next flight. I was playing acey-deucy in the flight-deck ready room with old Geezer Hawkins. He was the luckiest guy I ever saw. Didn't know nothing about the finer points of the game, but was always coming up with acey-deucy when it was the only thing that would save his neck. I just about had him beat when he rolled an acey-deucy this day and we heard a hell of a crash outside. The fire alarm went and Geezer says to me, 'It's my move when we come back.'
"We damn near lost the Bonne Homme that time. The whole forward end of the flight deck was ablaze, and pretty soon the bombs on the planes began cooking off and there was hell to pay. A two-hundred-pounder went off and took old Geezer's right leg off right at the knee. I drug him away just before a thousand-pounder on another plane went off that would of blown him to kingdom come.
"I went down to sick bay to see him after we got the fire out and the first thing he said to me was, 'You lucky son of a bitch. I had yon beat cold in that game if that goddamn Jap hadn't hit us . . .' Never did say a word to me about saving his life."
"I saved a guy's life once during the war, too," said Fatso. "When the Lexington got sunk. It was early in the war at the Battle of the Coral Sea. The Japs put a couple of torpedoes into us, blew two big holes in our bottom, and shook us up pretty bad. But we would of come out of it okay except that they started leaks in our gas tanks. This was before we learned how to control gas fumes, and pretty soon there was gas fumes all over the lower decks. Then the explosions started that tore us apart inside. We might have been able to get her back to port even then. But the Japs were right on top of us and the other ships had to get out. So we abandoned ship, and one of our own tin cans finished the old gal off with torpedoes. I was still on board when she rolled over and sunk. When I surfaced after getting off there was a young aviator in the water alongside me with no life jacket. He had been hurt fighting fires and was just about to go down when I got to him. I swum around holding him up for about an hour until a tin can picked us up . . . Admiral Halsey gave me a medal for it - old Halsey just loved to hand out medals."
"Yeah," said Scuttlebutt. "Now tell them who this guy was."
"It was an ensign named Hughes, just out of Pensacola," said Fatso.
"And tell them what he's doing now," said Scuttlebutt.
"He's a vice admiral now," said Fatso. "Commander of the Sixth Fleet."
"Gee," observed Adams. "This gives you an in right at the top. You must be able to get away with murder with a drag like that."
"Whaddya mean?" demanded Fatso. "I don't need no drag," he added piously. "I just do my duty like everybody else, and keep my nose clean . . . but of course if I happened to get into a jam, the chances are the Admiral would listen to my side of the story."
Next morning Fatso came on deck just before sunrise. It was a clear, cloudless morning and a few stars were still dimly visible in the west. There was a sharp horizon to the east, brilliantly lighted by the oncoming day sweeping across the world from the east. "Have you ever seen the green flash?" asked Scuttlebutt of Satchmo, who had the wheel.
"You mean at sunset?" asked Satchmo. "Yes sah. I've seen it several times."
"Ever seen it in the morning?" asked Fatso.
"No-o-o," said Satch. "It only happens at sunset."
"No. It happens in the morning, too," said Fatso. "But it's harder to see in the morning. At night you're watching the sun as it goes down, so you're looking right at it when it turns green. In the morning you're not looking right smack where the sun comes up usually, it only lasts about a second, and so you don't see it."
"What causes the green flash, Cap'n?" asked Satchmo.
At this point the Professor came on deck and Fatso said, "Maybe the Professor can explain it better than I can. How about it, Professor? We're talking about the green flash. Can you explain it to us?"
"Well, yeah," said the Professor. "I've never seen it, but I've heard about it. And I've talked to people who claimed they had seen it. It doesn't happen every day. You've got to have very clear air with no haze and a sharp sea horizon. When you get exactly the right atmosphere, the air acts like a prism and it splits the sunlight up into the colors of the rainbow. When the sun is above the horizon, the colors from one edge of it mix with the colors from the other, so you don't see the rainbow colors. It comes out as plain white sunlight. But as the sun goes down, you see less and less of it until finally there is just a little sliver left - almost a point source of light. That's when you see the green flash for about a second, just before it disappears. Actually, the last color in the spectrum is blue, but you don't see that because it blends with the color of the sky."
"Uh huh," said Fatso. "Well, you can see it in the morning, too, if you're looking in exactly the right place when the sun pops over the horizon."
"Well - yes. I suppose you can," said the Professor. "The same process occurs as at sunset, except in reverse."
"The sun will be coming up any minute now," said Fatso. "I'll bet we see it this morning."
The three of them concentrated their gaze on the eastern horizon. Presently the edge of the sun peeked over it just as green as grass. It only lasted for a little over a second, but it was unmistakable.
Soon after sunrise they were cruising along at ten knots with a light breeze blowing when suddenly Satchmo, who had been looking out on the port bow with his binoculars, sang out, "Sail ho."
"Where away?" demanded Fatso.
"About two points on the port bow," replied Satch, holding out the glasses. Fatso took the glasses and aimed them at the spot Satch indicated.
"Yeah," he said. "There's something out there all right. Right on the horizon. But I can't make out what it is."
"I think it's a man's head," said Satch.
"Maybe so," said Fatso. "Head for it and we'll sec."
As they approached the rest of the figure came over the horizon, and it soon became apparent that it was a man in a small rubber raft. "By gawd, that must be the pilot of the plane that went down the day before yesterday," observed Fatso. And that's what it turned out to be.
All hands were on deck by the time they reached Willy, and eager hands reached out to help him aboard.
"Ain't this something," remarked Willy, as he scrambled aboard. "The whole damn fleet was all around me here yesterday and couldn't find me. Now you guys come along and pick me up after they give up."
"You're the missing pilot we heard about on the radio, I guess," said Fatso.
"That's right. Lieutenant (JG) William Wigglesworth from VF 124. My plane blew up on me the other night and I had to bail out. I been paddling around in this rubber boat here for about thirty-six hours."
"Well, come on down to the messroom," said Fatso. "We'll give you a square meal and
frame a dispatch to the America."
Soon a dispatch went out to the America: "Have recovered Lieutenant Wigglesworth in good condition Lat 34-30, Long 19-50. He says his plane blew up and he bailed out. Request instructions."
After they got the dispatch off Fatso said to Willy, "Any idea what happened?"
"No," said Willy. "I was just flying along at forty-five thousand feet, everything normal, and all of a sudden there was a hell of an explosion. Knocked me cold. When I came to I was spinning, my controls were slack, my engine was gone, so I bailed out. I couldn't see well enough to tell how much was left of the plane. But I did see a big fireball go into the ocean."
"Were there any other ships around you when this happened?" asked Jenkins.
"Yeah. I had just picked up the Russian task group on my radar. I was about fifteen miles from them; two cruisers and six destroyers. But I never saw them."
"Hmmm," said Jenkins. "Maybe they knocked you down with one of those SAM's we've been hearing about."
"Could be," said Willy. "All I know is there was a hell of a flash; it felt like I had hit a brick wall, and I went out like a light. I was damned luckv I came to in time to bail out."
"I think it was a SAM that got you," said Jenkins. "There's nothing can happen to make a plane suddenly blow up like that."
"I been thinking about that too," said Willy, "ever since I been in the water, and I've just about come to the same conclusion, too!"
"Well, I've got some gear here that will enable us to find out about these SAM's and bitch them up," said Jenkins, pointing to his black boxes stowed in the corner.
"What's that?" demanded Willy.
"A lot of special electronics gear to go in your planes. There's a radar search receiver that will tell you whenever a radar beam hits your plane and what direction it came from. If the beam zeroes in on you and stays on you, this will alert you that it is probably the guidance beam for the SAM. We've got another black box that searches for the homing beam put out by the missile. As soon as you pick that up, you flip a switch and put out a beam of your own that buggers up the SAM and turns the missile away from you."
"Hmmm," said Willy. "Sounds like a tough way to make a living to me."
"Why?" asked Jenkins. "All you gotta do is flip a few switches."
"Yeah," said Willy. "But if any one of your black boxes doesn't work, you've had it. These guys play rough. I've had one of these things burst right in my face, and that's enough. I'll let somebody else fly your black boxes around and see if they work."
"Would you care for a little sniffer, Lieutenant?" asked Fatso.
"Yeah - I don't mind if I do," said Willy.
Fatso went to his cabin and came back with half a tumbler of Old Grand-Dad. Willy tossed it off with gusto.
"How about some bacon and eggs, Lieutenant?" asked Satchmo.
"Yeah - I could use that, too," said Willy.
As Willy was finishing his bacon and eggs a half hour later, a whirlybird came fluttering over the horizon and circled the ship a couple of times. "Well - that's pretty fast service," observed Fatso.
"Except they should of picked me up yesterday," said Willy.
Fatso headed into the wind and slowed to four knots. The whirlybird fluttered over, hovered at thirty feet for a while looking things over, and then set down on the well deck forward.
"I'll bet that's an all-time first for this type of craft," observed Fatso.
"Well - so long, skipper," said Willy. "Thanks for picking me up. I'll have something to say to the Admiral about that when I get back."
"Don't mention it," said Fatso. "Always glad to pick up shipwrecked fly-boys."
Jenkins tried to talk the whirlybird pilot into taking him and his boxes along too, but had no luck. The pilot said he didn't have room for all that stuff.
CHAPTER SIX
Balloon Trick
Later that day he, Fatso, Jenkins, and the Professor were seated in the mess room having a cup of coffee.
"You know," said the Professor, "I can sympathize with that flyer for not wanting to rely on your black boxes to protect him from SAM's. You gotta depend on a half a dozen of them, and if any one of 'em doesn't work, the penalty is very severe."
"It may sound kind of hairy," said Jenkins, "but it isn't; as soon as you get the signal from the Sam's homing radar, you just flip your transmitter button and send out a signal that turns the SAM away."
"Do we know enough about their radar frequencies and the frequency band of the SAM homers to do that?" asked the Professor.
"Well, no. We don't know their frequencies," said Jenkins. "That's why it takes so many black boxes. But we put enough equipment in the plane to cover the whole range of frequencies. So we'll pick it up, all right."
"If all that stuff works," said the Professor. "If it doesn't - then another poor fly-boy has had it."
"I been thinking about that angle of it, too," said Fatso. "The only way you can find out the frequency of that missile homer is to be within range of it when it's working. And if it works the way it's supposed to work, the only guy within range of it gets shot down, so he can't tell us what the frequency is."
"That's right. Except we've got search receivers that cover the whole spectrum. And they'll find it in time for us to bugger it."
"Yeah," said Fatso. "But wouldn't it be nice if we knew ahead of time what their homing frequency is?"
"Sure. It would eliminate a lot of search equipment and make things a lot simpler," said Jenkins.
"Well, maybe I've got an idea for finding out their search radar frequency," said Fatso. "During the war, the German subs used to pull a stunt on us with an aerology balloon. When they came up at night to charge batteries, they would have an aerology balloon on deck anchored to a small float with about ten feet of line and a big handful of tinfoil attached to the balloon. If any of our destroyers came along while they were charging batteries, they would drop this balloon overboard and submerge. The gob of tinfoil hanging on the balloon gave exactly the same kind of a blip on a destroyer's radar that a submarine's periscope did. Nobody likes to close in on a guy at night when they figure he is looking right down their throat with his periscope. So the destroyers would circle around the blip all night at a respectful distance, figuring they would nail the guy next time he had to surface again for air or to charge his battery. Meantime, the sub would go deep and buzz off. Come sunrise and the destroyers would find a silly goddamn balloon grinning at them and the sub would be long gone."
"Yeah, I read about that in a book about the Battle of the Atlantic," said Jenkins. "Half the time, the destroyers' skippers wouldn't even report it because it made them look silly."
"That's right," said Fatso. "Now I think maybe we can work a similar gag on the Russians to find out about their SAM frequencies."
"How do we do that?" asked Jenkins.
"Well," said Fatso, "suppose we get about twenty miles upwind of the Russians at night, and then turn loose an aerology balloon with a lot of tinfoil hanging on it. The balloon will go up to about thirty thousand feet and drift over the Russian ships. They'll get a good echo off the tinfoil with their radars, and maybe they'll launch a SAM at it. You could have all your black boxes set up on here to pick up and analyze their radar signals. We wouldn't interfere with their SAM homer, so it would take the missile right on in to the balloon and bust it. The Russians would assume they had shot down another one of our planes."
"Hmmm," said Jenkins. "Maybe you've got something there."
"I think it would depend on how sharp their radar operators are," said the Professor. "The speed of the balloon would be much too slow for a plane."
"Sure. But they'd get a real good echo off of it. And it could be a whirlybird. They haven't got a bunch of college professors on watch on their radar. They are evidently a pretty trigger-happy bunch, and they shoot down anything that comes near them at night. They had no way of knowing our plane was a fighter the other night. It could just as well have been an airliner."
"The Russians are in this area," said Fatso. "And we may run across them. Why don't you break out your black boxes and set 'em up so we can monitor their frequencies if we do run across them?"
"Okay," said Jenkins. "Can do."
"I'll help you," said the Professor. "I know a thing or two about electronics."
Late that afternoon they sighted the Russian task force dead ahead.
"Hah!" said Fatso. "How lucky can you get? Have you got your gear set up yet?" he asked of Jenkins.
"Pretty near," said Jenkins. "It will be ready by dark."
The wind was out of the northwest, so Fatso maneuvered to get upwind of the Russians, keeping their upper works visible just over the horizon. At sunset Jenkins reported, "All set, Cap'n. What time does the balloon go up?"
"As soon as it gets dark. About an hour from now," said Fatso.
An hour later, Jenkins and the Professor were seated at the table in the darkened messroom. In front of them was an array of black boxes with various dials and indicators. Once a minute a blip appeared on the radar scope attached to one of the boxes. "That's his air search radar," observed Jenkins. "It takes just a little over a minute to make its full sweep all around the horizon. I've got a good reading on it now, and have all the dope on its pulse repetition rate, frequency, and wave shape."
"Will his homing signal be the same?" asked the Professor.
"No," said Jenkins, "we don't know what its frequency is. That's why we need so much equipment to be sure we pick it up when it comes on."
"How about it down there?" yelled Fatso down the voice tube from the bridge. "You guys all ready?"
Away Boarders Page 5
